NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 161 



met with it in all Great-Britain, but observed it often in the 

 cabinets of the curious at Paris. Hasselquist says that it 

 migrates to Egypt in the autumn : and a most accurate 

 observer of Nature has assured me that he has found it on 

 the banks of the streams in Andalusia?- 



Our writers record it to have been found only twice in 

 Great- Britain. From all these relations it plainly appears 

 that these long legged plovers are birds of South Europe, 

 and rarely visit our island ; and when they do, are 

 wanderers and stragglers, and impelled to make so distant 

 and northern an excursion from motives or accidents for 

 which we are not able to account. One thing may fairly 

 be deduced, that these birds come over to us from the 

 continent, since nobody can suppose that a species not 

 noticed once in an age, and of such a remarkable make, 

 can constantly breed unobserved in this kingdom. 



1 This would be again his brother John. Colonel Soby mentions the species 

 as principally migratory near Gibraltar, but it breeds in the south of Spain and in 

 Marocco (cf. Om. Gibr. p. 275). [R. B. S.] 



VOL. II. 



